The invention relates to a method and apparatus that provides program suggestions. In particular, the invention relates to an interactive kiosk that suggests programs based on user-defined data.
Consumers are demanding that entertainment choices, such as television programs, videos and books, as well as menus describing these entertainment choices, be presented in a user friendly manner. User preferences are an important factor in determining what entertainment features to make available. Current systems provide entertainment choices in a passive manner and rely on the user to select a desired entertainment choice from a virtually unlimited array of choices. Improvements in technology and in computer hardware make better usability, interfaces and services, when providing entertainment choices. This same technology needs to be applied to selecting the entertainment choices.
In order for new television entertainment products to be successful, the products must satisfy consumer demands. TV consumers wish to go from limited viewing choices to a variety of choices, from no control of programming to complete control. Consumers wish to advance from cumbersome and inconvenient television to easy and convenient television and keep costs down. Consumers do not wish to pay for one hundred channels when due to lack of programming information, they seldom, if ever, watch programming on many of these channels.
The concepts of interactive television, high definition television and 300 channel cable systems in consumer homes will not sell if they are not packaged, delivered and presented in a useable fashion to consumers. The problem is that TV programming is not being presented to consumers in a user friendly manner.